I recent­ly returned from a trip to Japan. In the last few days of my stay, though, I man­aged a walk to the local super­mar­ket and found some neat type spec­i­mens in the can­dy aisle.

This is prob­a­bly my favorite one. The type looks exact­ly like what milk choco­late should taste like.

Mei­ji under­went a rebrand­ing about 15 months ago, bring­ing its two branch­es of dairy prod­ucts and confectionary/pharmaceutical prod­ucts under one roof and one logo. You can read about it at this com­pre­hen­sive Brand New arti­cle, or if you can read Japan­ese or tol­er­ate Google trans­la­tions, you can go straight to the com­pa­ny who designed it, Lan­dor Tokyo. Per­son­al­ly, I was glad that they forewent the exces­sive bevels/shadows on this prod­uct.

There isn’t real­ly any­thing spe­cial about this last one but I think we can all agree that “crunky” is a fun­ny word. From a Japan­ese speak­er’s point of view, “crunky” does seem as crispy-sound­ing as “crunchy,” which they also use in the pack­ag­ing (twice!). Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, I found the choco­late itself to be rather mediocre.

Bonus: Hotel Mar­garine!

(There appar­ent­ly are a cou­ple dif­fer­ent brands of “hotel mar­garine.” I’m not entire­ly sure what makes mar­garine of a “hotel” vari­ety. Any enlight­en­ment is high­ly appre­ci­at­ed)